


In Good Faith and Without Deceit

by lonelywalker



Series: A Particularly Bad Period in History [8]
Category: Miracle Workers (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, canon-typical religious weirdness, coda to 2x10, various villagers show up, what even is geography, wildly anachronistic fantasy history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:53:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23595649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: “You are my king,” Vexler said, more firmly than he would ever have dared before. “Until my death or yours, you are my king. That doesn’t change because you leave, or because you fuck up, or because you tell me you’re not. So you’ll be my king and I’ll be yours, and we’ll pretend that makes some kind of fucking sense.”
Relationships: King Cragnoor/Lord Chris Vexler
Series: A Particularly Bad Period in History [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1698502
Comments: 10
Kudos: 13





	In Good Faith and Without Deceit

Life on board the yacht was everything Vexler could ever have dreamed: days that blended into one another, unblemished by war or plots or budgets to balance. For the first time in his life, he could sleep just as long as he wanted, with no demands on his time, no anxious courtiers or assassins begging instructions, and no worries weighing on his mind. It was all warm and golden, a cocoon of safety, of love. 

Ethan was different now. He was _Ethan_ for one thing, with no kingdom to rule, no crown crushing him with duties and an eternal dread of his own inevitable destruction. Vexler had never seen him so relaxed, so effortlessly happy, as their days were filled with lovemaking, with chess, with Ethan reading to him from their endless library. And when they pulled into various exotic ports, full of sunshine and color, Ethan would take him by the hand and they’d wander through markets and alleys, just two men blissfully sharing their lives and planning an equally blissful future…

It was always that hand, held out to him in hope and love and friendship, that made him realize it was all a fantasy. In his dreams he never hesitated to take it, no matter how many people might see. In his dreams he was Ethan’s, and Ethan was his, and nothing else mattered or could ever possibly matter.

In reality he’d looked at that hand and turned his back, walking and then running away. Never mind that there had been tears in his eyes and a pain in his chest greater than the effort of sprinting two miles along a dirt road with arrows whistling overhead. He’d made his decision. He’d rejected Ethan and love and an easy life, all so he could live with himself. In the past year since the Valdrogians had retreated from Lower Murkford, he’d wondered far too many times if he could even do that.

***

Now, his days as the king of Lower Murkford (and other vaguely-defined nearby regions) were filled with the pressure and responsibility of a thousand decisions, but he could deal with the days. Weighing life and death in his hands was nothing new, and neither was facing down the princes and diplomats of neighboring kingdoms, replying to their thinly-veiled threats over trade with gossamer-veiled inquiries about how much they liked their water supply. It was a game he was used to playing, and being the final authority on every decision made everything simpler. He knew he could trust himself, even if most of the faces around him were new.

The nights were another matter, once soldiers and counsels dispersed, and he was left to the empty luxuries of his chambers. He had time and books. He could have the guards find some smart scullery boy willing to play a few rounds of chess, or some equally smart scullery boy willing to do far more. But night after night he lay on the bed, fully clothed, his sword by his hand, and felt grief mingle with fear in the pit of his belly. No matter how much time passed, his every thought seemed to begin with, _If Ethan were here…_ and largely ended with rebukes to himself about how he needed his sleep, how any assassins would use his own sword against him, how he should find his refuge in wine or opium or some fine young body and move on. 

He considered going to Roz the therapist, who was nice and always smiled at him like she could read his thoughts… but probably dissolving into tears over the man who had burned down her hut was the very definition of impolitic. Maybe Lila had some druidic remedies for heartbreak, but they probably involved dancing around naked on a full moon, and he really needed to wait for warmer weather.

Despite it all, he saw Ethan everywhere, lingering in the shadows of corridors and stairwells, on the fringes of crowds. He felt the heat and weight of his body in bed, dreamed of his voice whispering all those lovers’ in-jokes in the moments before he jolted awake. He had even gone over the chambers with a lamp, just to check for secret passages and false walls. Everything, except his heart, was resoundingly solid.

There had been no news of King Cragnoor since the day of the Valdrogian invasion, but news beyond Lower Murkford was hard to come by and notoriously unreliable, especially with his network of spies mostly scattered to the winds. Ethan could have been sailing the Mediterranean on his yacht. He could have been dead. When people left Lower Murkford, they might as well be passing into the netherworld. You could imagine that they were safe and happy, or long dead. What did it really matter? No one ever came back.

And then…

He had expected a million _and then…_ moments, expected to wake up and find Ethan next to him, expected to have his throat slit on the street in retribution for his disloyalty, or be dragged off on horseback to wherever Ethan had been hiding out all year, expected every possible way they could find each other again. Except perhaps via application form.

“Sire, there’s a knight begging an audience with you. Rode in this evening past, he says out from the Angevins.” Trent was a good sort of assistant, diligent and loyal, although he paid a bit too much attention to how people spoke in epic romance poems.

“What does he want?”

Trent presented an open scroll with a flourish. “To swear fealty, he says. I’d bet he wants a bed and a hot meal. Not much in the way of quests for knights errant these days, your grace.”

Vexler frowned over the scroll, which was exactly the kind of bullshit most knights errant tended to carry around as their resume. After all this time in the castle, he still had very little idea what you actually did with a knight. “Do we have any dragons or kidnapped princesses around here?”

“Not that I’ve noticed, sire, but I can check with the town crier.” Trent paused. “If I may… He does have a good horse, nice sword. If he’s the real deal, the lads could do with an instructor who can get on his horse the right way round more than half the time.”

“I doubt any real knight would even be here, but fine, show him in.”

In all his life, there had only been one person whose very gait was branded in his heart. He heard it, felt it, even while he squinted to read awful Carolingian handwriting on the latest round of reports demanding his attention. And by the time he girded his heart and looked up, the knight had taken a knee on the stone floor, head bent.

The clothes were different - no rings, no ornamentation, just a black gambeson like many a knight might wear, a sword at his hip. He was clean shaven, but his dark hair was shaggy, wild, like someone too accustomed to sleeping in forests.

“What’s your name, sir?” Vexler asked, his voice stronger than he’d anticipated.

“Ethan, your grace.”

Vexler was impressed by how well his brain could work when his breath was stopped. “Sir Ethan of…?”

“Murkford, if you’ll have me, your grace.”

The voice was unmistakable. The words, though… It could only be some cruel joke that Ethan had concocted as punishment. King Cragnoor knelt and swore fealty to no one. Least of all to a former peasant who had defied him, broken his oath, and taken over his kingdom. 

Vexler eyed that sword and laid a palm on the hilt of his own. Not that it would matter. Ethan could cut down every man in the castle without needing to catch his breath. “Come now, sir knight, no one has ever wanted to be Sir Ethan of Murkford. What crimes and debts are you running from, that this humble place would be a refuge?”

“My crimes and debts are many, your grace. But I hope to undertake penance here.”

“Penance? Are you a God-fearing man, Ethan?” This felt like one of their old conversations, the back-and-forth of trying to trip each other up, but from those nerve-wracking days before Cragnoor was his friend and lover, when he was simply a giant unpredictable man with a bag of skulls and a very sharp sword.

“I fear and serve no gods, your grace. I seek only to do homage and be faithful to my lord king, now and always.”

Vexler waited, trying to detect a note of sarcasm in those words and waiting for the facade to drop. But Ethan could as well have been a statue kneeling there, infinitely patient and deferential. He swallowed and looked back down at his papers, trying to convince himself that this truly was just another man seeking employment, that he was seeing and hearing things, that Ethan - his Ethan - was long gone or long dead.

“We’ll see about always,” he said. “Speak to the training master in the courtyard. If he can use your assistance, we can tolerate your presence… and your penance, whatever that involves.”

He was gone by the time Vexler looked back up, which was just as well. Better to pretend it had never happened, that he was mistaken, that there was some other man in the world who looked and sounded like _that_.

That night he slept better than he had in months, naked under furs like he’d once slept with Ethan, his sword laid across his writing desk, out of reach. If Ethan was here to kill him, no weapon would make any difference. And if Ethan was here for another reason… Well, he was happy to sink into dreams of being with his lover on some Mediterranean cruise, imagining Ethan’s arms around him, the taste of his lips...

It took another night and a day of pretending that he had absolutely no interest in Sir Ethan of Murkford before he had no more nerve or patience left. Vexler woke early, dressed, and collared a guard with the demand to know where Ethan was billeted. 

“The stables, I believe, your grace.”

“The stables? The only knight in the realm and we can’t give him a better bed than a hay bale?”

The guard pursed his lips. “Think he was of the opinion we might try to steal his horse, your grace.”

Vexler had learned that in some cases, jumping to conclusions was exactly the right way forward. “Did we try to steal his horse?”

“You know how it is, sire, the kitchen boys, they get restless…”

Vexler left various oaths in his wake as he made his way to the stables, curiously passing no evidence of splintered bone or exsanguinated children on the way. He navigated past several stallions being led out by stable boys, caught a glimpse of the man he wanted, and called in his most demanding voice: “Sir Ethan, a word please.”

He’d imagined it would be hard to look at him, to talk to him, up close in the sunlight of the early morning, when they had no shadows or protocol to hide within. He hadn’t anticipated the way Ethan’s eyes and lips and voice - gods, his _voice_ \- dissolved everything inside him.

“Did you come here to kill me or to fuck me?” Vexler demanded once they were out behind the stables, looking out as the sun rose over Lower Murkford. “Because you’ve been here two days and I was expecting you to try at least one of them.”

Ethan met his eyes and Vexler could sense the beginning of a familiar riposte before he dipped his gaze. “I am here to serve you, your grace.”

Vexler seized him by the belt buckle, jolting it roughly. “Do you think I’m blind? Do you? I’m not interested in whatever game you’re playing. Why are you here? Where have you been?”

“Paris, mostly.”

“Paris? With Chauncley?”

“Not _with_ , but yes, I saw him.”

“And?”

“Your grace?”

Shaking words out of him via the belt buckle was clearly going nowhere, so Vexler grabbed Ethan’s sword and drew it instead. That big, familiar sword that was already making his wrist ache. “If you’re taking me as your king, you can fucking well talk to me. Jesus, Ethan, I shouldn’t have to wring it out of you word by word.”

Ethan sighed and reached to take the sword, like he was taking a kitchen knife from a child who was obviously moments from stabbing himself. “Chauncley’s in Paris with the girl, with Alexandra. They’re fine. They’re healthy. They have money.” He inspected the blade and re-sheathed it with such finality it seemed like he was done talking. But then he added: “I’m sorry I was away for so long, Chris.”

“You’re sorry.” The word made so little sense, it might as well have been ancient Valdrogian, or the Greek that Vexler kept meaning to study. 

Ethan nodded slowly. “I’ve never been as clever as you. It took me far too many months to realize where my priorities should always have been. And then, choosing between you and Chauncley… My guess was you could keep your head above water for longer. Seems I guessed correctly.”

Lashing out defensively was an instinct. “Nice that you decided to care about all of us after abandoning the whole village to be flayed by a Valdrogian horde.”

“I didn’t care about the village. I still don’t.”

All the ways Vexler had thought of attacking him, with fists and with words, seemed entirely impotent now that Ethan was standing there, apologizing to him, complimenting him. It still had to be a trick, but he wanted to believe it so badly. “I should’ve known Chauncley would fuck up the wedding. I should’ve told you.” And now he was apologizing to the man who had wronged him, who had wronged them all by leaving an entire village to die. Roz would have a field day.

“We all fucked up the wedding,” Ethan said. “Me most of all. I fucked up my son’s life from the very beginning, when it turns out all I really had to do was leave.”

Vexler frowned, caught between agreeing and objecting. “You should talk to him. Tell him.”

“He’ll do far better without me. He’s already doing far better.”

News of Chauncley was heartening. Vexler had found him irritating in large part, but he’d also been a good kid, with more spirit and a sense of humor than most people who hung around the castle. He picked at the stitching on his cuff, wondering why Chauncley was still a “good kid” but he felt so fucking old. “So you’re here because you think I can’t do without you.”

“It’s pretty clear you can do fine without me, Chris. You always have. No, I’m here because I know I can’t do without you. And I have a lot to make up for.”

Jesus. It was like the Ethan from his dreams had materialized in front of him, saying the same words. The real Ethan wasn’t supposed to apologize and declare his feelings like… like he was some normal person rather than an emotionally-stunted aristocrat. “You can’t ask me to forgive you for what you did,” Vexler said, knowing that he probably would in fact give Ethan absolutely anything he asked for in under a minute.

“All I’m asking is to be allowed to serve.”

 _To serve._ For all he’d laughed at conventions as king, Ethan certainly knew how to play the dutiful servant. If only Vexler had half an idea how he could possibly play the unfeeling master and let Ethan linger on the edges of his life, training guards, grooming horses, eking out his penance by being no one… If he even meant what he said. 

Vexler decided to gamble. “As it happens, I have need of a bodyguard. Come to my chambers this evening and we’ll discuss it. You remember the way, don’t you?”

***

King Cragnoor’s chambers had not belonged to the man himself in close to a year, but they had changed very little. Vexler had removed a lot of the skulls from in and around the castle (although the giant one in the war room was both too cool and too awkward to detach), but otherwise interior decorating seemed like a low priority. It wasn’t as though Lower Murkford had a fine assortment of home accessory stores. And, yes, he had too often buried himself in pillows and furs, pretending to convince himself that the scent remaining there was still of Ethan, and not some long-dead forest creature.

There was a knock at the door, which both surprised and puzzled him. Ethan didn’t knock. Ethan had possibly _never_ knocked in his entire life. It was vaguely perplexing to even think about circumstances where Ethan might have become aware of knocking as a general concept.

“Come in?” Ethan would never have framed it as a question. Ideally Vexler would have attended a few seminars on becoming a monarch, rather than ascending to the throne in the deeply unconventional manner of having a crown handed to him in a field. Perhaps he should’ve objected more, looked harder for a hereditary heir, instituted some kind of Roman-style democracy… Ha, no. That was even more laughable than his own claim to power.

“Your grace.” 

Ethan could pretend to be a humble knight and servant of the realm all he wanted. He had the verbiage down. The kneeling. The bowed head and the deference. But he didn’t have one single ounce of the fear. 

“Thanks for coming.”

“I serve at your pleasure, your grace.”

Vexler eyed him. “You really don’t. You didn’t swear an oath to me. If anything, I swore an oath to you.”

Fealty. It had been an honor even to be asked to get on his knees and swear his eternal loyalty to his king, even unto death, as though the loyalty of one Christopher Vexler, son of no known father, of no known address, was actually worth something to a man Vexler had regarded as something of a god. Still regarded, if he was honest. Ethan had his flaws, but every god Vexler had ever come across seemed to have even more problematic personality deficits, without being half as good in bed.

“Your oath was null the moment I abandoned my kingdom.”

“You know that’s not true. There are no footnotes in oaths, Ethan. I swore an oath to you, not to Lower Murkford.”

Ethan still had his back to the door, his face mostly in shadow. After all these years, Vexler could never shake the impression that every conversation was a test, with lives and destinies in the balance. “And yet you left me for Lower Murkford.”

“For the people. For your son. Not for some patch of earth by a shitty river.” Vexler poured himself a glass of wine. A big, big glass. “Are you coming in? Or trying to become part of the furniture?”

There was no response, but Ethan did at least move, unbuckling his sword and then falling into his favored armchair with a kind of careless sprawl that betrayed his practiced knight persona. 

“I’m still not sure if you’re mad at me for leaving, or mad at yourself… Is it both?” 

Ethan rubbed absently at his finger where no ring sat. “I wish a lot of things had gone differently. But I’m not angry with you, Chris. I never could be, really.”

“Maybe you could’ve mentioned that a few dozen shattered skulls ago.” They’d rarely been provoked by his actions alone, but he’d frequently spent days and nights racked with terror as a result. He sloshed wine into a glass for Ethan too - whatever he’d been doing all day, it had probably been thirsty work - but Ethan waved it away. “You won’t take the king’s wine?”

“I spent far too long marinating in the king’s wine on the king’s yacht. In wine and in… Regret. Loss. Self-pity. Not something I’d like to revisit.”

Vexler took a drink, then poured Ethan’s glass into his own. A drunk King Cragnoor had been a truly terrifying prospect. But a sober Ethan was also slightly unnerving. “Are you abstaining from all worldly pleasures then?”

“Once my mind was clear again, I sought out word of you and Chauncley. I expected you would both be dead, or at best vassals of the Valdrogians. In fact the minstrels told me I was dead, you were king, and the brave prince had left for Paris with his peasant bride. A very neat end to the story.”

“Not really,” said Vexler, thinking about just how much clean-up he’d had to do after that neat end.

“I found my son in Paris. Truly I was impressed that he and the girl even made it there. But of course they had no money, no skills, didn’t speak a word of French despite the fact I’m sure Chauncley had a French tutor at some point.”

“Yeah, you killed her. She was spying for the Ambivariti.”

“Just so. Well, let us say Chauncley suddenly found himself a mysterious benefactor - rather less mysterious to the Shitshoveler girl, I imagine - and they may now be able to support themselves in their ventures without resorting to the usual occupation of the handsome and penniless.”

Vexler took another sip of wine. “And then you came here.”

“No. Then I went to therapy.”

“Really? I didn’t receive any dispatches from Paris about an outbreak of house fires.”

The smile was there on Ethan’s lips, much as he tried to suppress it. “I’ll admit I had some trouble finding someone who was neither petrified of me, nor overly disgusted by my lifestyle choices, but I did eventually locate a willing professional.”

“When you say ‘lifestyle choices’ do you mean bathing in the blood of your relatives, or…” Vexler gazed into the pits of his glass, disappointed with how little was left. 

“I mean my deep, passionate, abiding love for another man, yes. Some therapists found that the more objectionable part of my character.”

“Murder’s a growth industry,” Vexler said, and dropped into the other chair, trying to make his mind stop drumming those three words into his consciousness: Deep. Passionate. _Abiding_.

“And once I had more or less regained my sanity, I came here.”

“I still don’t know why.” The words came out a little louder than he intended, and much more tinged with anger.

“You do know why.”

Vexler batted away the suggestion with his hand. “You love me. Okay. But that’s not the answer to anything. Are you here to take your kingdom back?”

“I think we both know that isn’t the answer to anything either. I lost my kingdom. You saved it… Or you created something new. What matters is, it’s not my kingdom anymore. It’s yours.”

“That doesn’t sound like something King Cragnoor the Heartless would say. Or his father, King Lars the Crusher. Or _his_ father, King Edger the Disemboweler.” Vexler could go down the whole bloody corridor of portraits, but the theme was pretty repetitive. “So some Paris shrink screwed with your head and now you’re filled with love and peace and bullshit. You know leopards don’t change their spots. How long before I get a knife in my back and you’re sitting pretty on the throne again?”

He’d almost - almost - forgotten how much he loved making Ethan smile. Loved it when those dark eyes filled with laughter, like a long-buried mischievous boy was being dragged to the surface. “I was very pretty, wasn’t I?”

Vexler wanted more wine. The situation basically demanded it. But he didn’t want to get up to fetch it. Wasn’t this exactly the kind of circumstance where it was supposed to pay to be king?

“You’ve seen me at my worst, Chris, when my hold on sanity was slipping and I was drenched in blood. And I still never came close to hurting you or lying to you… Why start now?”

“You’re giving me a headache.” He was out of practice at Ethan’s chess games, especially when the game had so fundamentally changed over the past year that he had no clue of the rules, the goal, or even the pieces on the board. Vexler closed his eyes and drove his thumb into his temple, rubbing, hoping to find some clarity or relief, or to just _wake up_ to some simpler reality.

When he blinked open his eyes, it was only a split-second before Ethan’s fingers were in his hair, smoothing down thick unruly tufts. “Christopher,” Ethan said, a note of command back in his voice, “would you like me to kiss you?”

Vexler nodded dumbly, at least half because it was the path of least resistance, but it only took the touch of those lips, the heat of that breath, for him to mumble “Oh fuck,” right into Ethan’s mouth and know that this was the relief he had been seeking.

It should have been far more awkward than it was, his whole body tensed against the distance a year had carved out between them. In his more lucid imaginings, this had been when the irreversible loss of what they’d once had between them had become absolutely clear: Ethan had never been the man he’d hoped, and he had rejected Ethan, and none of that deep-down hurt and core character could be healed or changed by any amount of kissing.

In reality, Ethan just tasted really, really _good_ , even without the roughness of his beard, and Vexler had missed this beyond anything, and all he wanted was more. 

“My king,” Ethan murmured, kissing his jawline, working blindly on unfastening the ties of Vexler’s shirt, and it might have been a little ironic joke but Vexler’s cock certainly didn’t care. 

“You didn’t actually swear an oath.” Obviously there was no greater turn-on than discussing matters of courtly protocol while his exiled king ran his entirely too-large hand over his chest, sparking up heat in every inch of neglected skin and hair.

Ethan eyed him like he’d just been told to go wash his hands. “Do you doubt my loyalty?”

“I…” Honestly this _was_ awkward, mostly because Ethan’s knee was resting on the chair, shoved right up against his crotch, and Ethan was, as ever, too fucking big for them to be making out in an armchair, and Vexler's pants were, pretty much as ever, too fucking tight. 

Vexler swallowed. “You left before. What’s to say you won’t run off the second things get hard?” He grabbed a handful of Ethan’s hair the very second his gaze predictably flickered downward. “You know what I mean. When it isn’t all sex and feasts and winning wars. When you have to crawl through garbage and play the fool and protect people you don’t even like, not because it’s fun or will make a cool portrait. Because it’s the right thing to do.”

At times he’d wished that Ethan was simply a more agreeable person, who would nod and smile and do whatever he wanted. But really that wouldn’t be Ethan at all. Not even Ethan after therapy and potions. “My oath isn’t to Lower Murkford or some peasants-”

“People,” Vexler corrected unthinkingly. “People, villagers, hard-working average Murkfordians.”

“Or some _villagers_. I will do all those things and more for you, Chris. Not for anyone else.”

Vexler ran his thumb over that old curved scar at Ethan’s hairline. “So if I order you to dive into a garbage chute…”

“I swear, on my faith, to remain loyal to my lord king, and to obey all his commands in good faith… And then make him pay for them dearly in bed.” Ethan stood up, pulling Vexler with him, their hands clasped tightly. “My loyalty to you is absolute. That’s all I can promise. Is that enough?”

Vexler inspected their intertwined fingers - his darker, Ethan’s longer - and pressed his lips to them. “If my oath is still good enough for you.”

“Chris, I told you-”

“You are my king,” Vexler said, more firmly than he would ever have dared before. “Until my death or yours, you are my king. That doesn’t change because you leave, or because you fuck up, or because you tell me you’re not. So you’ll be my king and I’ll be yours, and we’ll pretend that makes some kind of fucking sense.”

He’d spent hours staring at the old portraits that had been taken down from the walls, stacked in his old chambers. Hours more with his eyes closed, his hand working between his legs, recalling every single moment with Cragnoor - with Ethan - and every detail about him. And somehow every glance at him now still hit him hard with the impact of everything he’d forgotten.

“What?” Ethan asked in a whisper, answering his stare.

Vexler debated the merits of telling him _you have beautiful eyelashes_ and elected instead to tug him by both hands toward the bed. “Come. It’s been a year. Ravish me.”

In his dreams of the yacht, it was always slow and unhurried when they lay down together, in an embrace that was as much about touching and kissing as it was about striving for an eventual climax. Every moment brought back part of Ethan to him, shocking in its stark reality. His fantasies could never replicate the weight of Ethan’s body, nor the easy fluidity of his movements, the way their bodies met with all the smoothness of skin and the friction of hair, and the promising beginnings of deeper pleasure as Ethan’s hips rocked experimentally against his own.

He wanted to grin and ask Ethan about all the boys he’d had in Paris, knowing that there would have been no boys, but this was no time to provoke even a flicker of an argument. Not with Ethan’s hair tickling his lips, Ethan taking in the taste of his skin with hot kisses on his chest, tongue twisting over hard nipples. 

“You speak French?” he asked instead, tucking his arms behind his head like they were sunbathing on a riverbank.

Ethan looked up at him through undeniably beautiful eyelashes. “My father was a king. My mother was a queen. Of course I speak French.”

“Never really figured out why kings care about educating their kids. It’s not like you have to find a job.”

“If a few things had worked out differently, I might have spent my life managing my brother’s lands, or been an envoy in my sister’s wars.”

A few things. Like if Ethan had been the weak, sickly brother rather than a lion with an in-built aptitude for war. “Tell me you love me.”

Ethan’s tongue brushed over his navel. “I love you.”

“I meant in French!” Vexler protested, but Ethan was already working his way lower down, thumbs stroking along the lines of Vexler’s hips, where veins pulsed barely below the surface. His breath stirred the hair at his crotch as Vexler parted his thighs further, his cock lazily rising. 

Ethan’s hands smoothed down the insides of his thighs, and then he was saying something in French that might have been romantic and was probably obscene, but then his mouth was on Vexler’s balls, his long fingers wrapped around the shaft, and Vexler found himself far more interested in other linguistic capabilities.

His head pressed back into the pillows, lifting his hips. “Tell me this isn’t another dream.”

There was a little huff of what might have been laughter, and then everything around his cock was hot and wet, and Vexler’s hips jerked just as Ethan pressed a calming hand to his belly, fingers splayed. After a year, simply letting go and spending in his lover’s mouth was even more of a primal impulse than a temptation - Ethan’s tongue felt unbelievably good, sensation licking at his thighs, his balls aching - but he couldn’t bear for it to be over that quickly.

“I need to feel you inside me again,” he said, the words cooling his blood. “Inside me, around me, everywhere.”

Ethan let his cock go with a pop of air. “Have you… this last year?”

“God, when did you get so considerate?” Vexler pulled his knees up, reaching over for the oil beside the bed. “You’ll fuck me and I’ll like it.”

Ethan caught the tossed oil one-handed. “Does it hurt in the dream?”

“Your cock’s in me morning, noon, and night, why would it hurt?”

“Chris…” Ethan shook his head, but he was laughing. “Perhaps this is _le droit divin des rois, non_?”

Vexler could recognize that one. “The divine right of a king to be fucked by another king, if he’d stop stalling. I’m beginning to realize I could’ve been having so much sex instead of waiting for you. Maybe from people who talk less.”

“You were waiting for me? That’s so sweet.”

“Jesus Christ.” He dug his big toe into the underside of Ethan’s chin. “You serve at my pleasure, remember?”

“And you at mine.”

It was intense, having Ethan inside him again - almost too intense, the stretch and ache occasionally edging over into real pain, but only ever for a moment before his body adjusted and the pleasure washed through him again. He’d fingered himself on some lonely nights, but that wasn’t anything close to the way this felt, the way Ethan filled him, gathered him up in his arms and owned every part of him. A sob escaped his lips, because of how perfect this was, how close to complete ecstasy, and how much time they’d wasted.

“I know,” Ethan said. “I know.”

Ethan took it so slow and steady it would have been frustrating on any other night, but Vexler wanted this to last till eternity, being warm and full and loved, Ethan’s kisses leaving him lightheaded and gasping for air. His cock was still hard, so hard that every impulse in his body was screaming at him to touch himself, but he slid his fingers into Ethan’s hair instead, holding him close, trying to commit every line of his face to memory in case this was the last time.

When Ethan finally moved faster, groaning at the needs of his own body, he gripped Vexler’s thighs and shifted just so, and suddenly every thrust felt like Vexler was coming, like waves of white-hot pleasure crashing through him. 

He felt Ethan break first, though, that stutter of his hips and renewed intensity, like something greater was gripping them both, that deep moan that was almost pain and ebbed into pure relief, Ethan burying his head in Vexler’s shoulder as Vexler felt the tension go out of him, his breaths coming hard and fast.

Vexler would have been happy enough just to stay like that, even with the danger of having all the air crushed out of him, but Ethan stirred and muttered something, and reached for Vexler’s erection.

This time when Ethan took him in his mouth, he was already on a knife edge, the surge of pressure immediately coming back. And then Ethan slid three fingers into him, through the mess of oil and come, and pressed in just the right spot, and Vexler had never climaxed so intensely in his life, hips jerking up, head smacking into the pillows so hard his vision whited out, and Ethan swallowing down what felt like every inch of him.

It seemed like he lost time - seconds, hours - lying there, coming back to himself. His mouth was dry, his body drained, but Ethan was still there, head on his stomach. Vexler found his own hand, shook some life into it, and patted Ethan’s head. He’d thought Ethan was sleeping. But no, Ethan was… shivering? His breaths harsh and ragged...

“Are you crying over my cock?” The words were out before he realized they might not be a joke. “Ethan?”

Ethan coughed and cleared his throat and pulled away, sitting up, his long legs pulled to his chest as he wiped his eyes with his fingers. “Sorry, I…”

Was this what therapy did to you? Was this why you went to therapy in the first place? Or was this just what a year apart could do to someone?

Vexler struggled up, having to relocate all his limbs and convince them they were still part of one functioning body. “Hey, I’m here. We’re together now. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Once Ethan had composed himself, he had the kind of face you could look at and convince yourself that he had never smiled or cried or felt a single emotion in his life. Vexler wrapped an arm around his shoulders anyway, and waited.

“When I met Chauncley’s mother, I had no idea what I was doing,” Ethan said after a long silence. “I’d spent years as a soldier… I barely knew what humans did with each other that wasn’t waging war. And she was very beautiful, very small and delicate, like a porcelain doll. I’d never even fucked in a bed before. I was so afraid of hurting her and I felt so ashamed, not knowing how to please my own wife.”

“I don’t think that’s so unusual, honestly.” What Vexler had taken for sex education in Lower Murkford mainly came from very crude graffiti.

“Perhaps not. She wasn’t surprised or disappointed. She said she understood completely, and they’d told her that I preferred boys. Which was mostly why she wasn’t afraid to marry me… Maybe I’d let her have her own life and not just use her to produce endless heirs. That was fine with me. I just didn’t understand…”

“Well, it’s a tough life for a queen,” Vexler said, even though he had the sense this wasn’t the question. “None of the power, all of the children.”

Ethan didn’t seem to hear. “Someone told her I preferred boys. Men. Someone knew this about me. But no one had ever thought to tell me the same thing. So I was naked in my marriage bed with my new wife, and suddenly my life made sense for the first time. Why I felt so out of place at home, why my father sent me away, why I felt like I belonged out there on the battlefield, even though I was always cold and tired and watching my friends die.”

Vexler gave his shoulder a squeeze, contemplating that maybe the question was not why Ethan had been crying now, but why he wasn’t doing it constantly.

“For a year or so I knew who I was. I had a friend I could talk to. But then she died and I had this… this son I didn’t know what to do with, and no one to ask, and nothing to do except go back to war. Until I met you.”

The math wasn’t exactly hard - almost the entire span of Chauncley’s life. And a large part of Vexler’s own. “Meeting you changed my life too. Completely. I’d still be a cabbage seller, or dead. Probably dead.”

“But you always knew who you were, didn’t you, Chris? Because you’ve always been smarter than me.”

“It helped that my parents didn’t marry me off to a complete stranger for political gain. Or send me into some endless war. Or teach me to solve all my problems by murdering people.” His hand moved to the base of Ethan’s neck, pressing, massaging. “Everything in our world is wrong, but we still found each other. And now we can start making things better.”

Ethan glanced around at him. “Better how?”

“I don’t know: less murder, less fear, fewer smart people feeling like they have to travel to the ends of the earth rather than staying put and making a change. I’ll figure something out. What you have to figure out is how we can make Lower Murkford a good place to live without also making it an attractive conquest for all those armies out there that are four hundred times larger than ours. I can give you about ten men, some really nice dioramas, and maybe a horse if the kitchen boys haven’t stolen it.”

“Oh good,” Ethan said. “It’s only impossible.” But he moved back against Vexler, wrapping Vexler’s arms around himself. 

“You want to handle educating the illiterate, balancing the budget, and creating a healthcare policy that isn’t solely based on sending sickly teens into the forest to fight wolves, be my guest.”

Ethan sighed. “I’ll have the report on your desk by the weekend, your grace.”

Vexler smiled and kissed his temple. It was, occasionally, good to be king.

***

Days as the king of Lower Murkford passed in much the same way as before: solving one problem or repairing one destroyed home led to demands for more solutions, more repairs, more ways just to get life back to a normal that had never been that great for most people to begin with. But these were the kind of challenges he could overcome, allocating money and manpower, and teaching the new castle counsels to do things like take notes and file paperwork. The challenges he couldn’t overcome, like defending hundreds of people against invaders who always seemed to be just beyond the forest, were now someone else’s problem. And that someone else, far from being overwhelmed, seemed to actually be… happy?

He rarely saw Ethan during the day, unless he deliberately took a stroll outside or “accidentally” left something in the war room that an assistant certainly couldn’t fetch. But Ethan was always there at night, covered in sweat, stinking of horses and leather and whatever perfume teenage boys were soaking themselves in these days.

“Are you actually making progress, or do you just like hitting children with swords?” Vexler asked one evening after an exhilarated Ethan had regaled him with a story from the bathtub about how best to instill fearlessness in one’s very fearful troops.

“Do you actually read my reports, or do you just like gazing at my beautiful penmanship?”

“I read the one that had three whole pages explaining how you’d like to fuck me upside down. And honestly even with the explanatory diagrams I was pretty lost.”

Ethan flicked water droplets at him. “I’ll show you later.”

“It’ll have to be later,” Vexler said, gathering up his papers from his desk. “We have a dinner date with your in-laws.”

“My what?”

“Al’s family. Eddie Shitshoveler and his son, and his, well, I guess the Valdrogians would say _girlfriend_.”

Ethan placed his arms very decidedly on the rim of the tub. “I thought he married a goat.”

“He did. And believe me, that whole royal goat issue is on a very long list of problems to correct, if I ever come to an agreement with the executioners’ union. Come on. Get dressed. Clean clothes.”

“My mother didn’t nag me as much as you do.” The water cascaded off him when he moved.

“Your mother was trying to raise four bloodthirsty demons in human form. Staying away was probably smart.” 

“Three bloodthirsty demons.” Ethan’s arms were suddenly around him, soaking his shirt, wet hair smearing his face. “I’m thirsty for more than your blood.” Vexler was still rolling his eyes when Ethan dropped to his knees and started loosening his belt.

They were late to dinner, not that the Shitshovelers had a clock or could tell time any hour after dark. No matter how much work Vexler did on the village, Lower Murkford was still Lower Murkford, muddy and damp and smelling strongly of everything awful. He told himself he was cringing because he wanted Ethan to like it, or at least wanted Ethan to _care_ , but then he’d never liked the place himself, had he? He’d left for a soft bed the moment he could, and was still vaguely ashamed of having spent so many years there. 

Still, he was the king, and he was having dinner with regular villagers, and he’d even walked into town rather than taken a carriage. Having Ethan with him, sword at his hip, dismissed the illusion of normalcy a bit, but in the darkness of the road he had let his hand slide into Ethan’s, and that somehow felt better. Not normal, but better.

He’d found himself at the Shitshovelers’ home a lot in the early days, when the castle still felt unbearably lonely. Eddie and Lila had more sense than most, and their home was warm, even if the smoke from their fire stung his eyes and the stench of Eddie’s daily occupation couldn’t be completely ignored. He’d brought food to them, to avoid choking down rock sprouts, and Lila’s druid beer raised his spirits along with Mikey’s wide-eyed wonder at the painfully boring aspects of castle life. And now he’d brought Ethan, who was apparently happy to sleep in ditches and radiated intense discomfort at the prospect of a family dinner.

“Ethan, eh? Welcome! Any friend of the king’s, I always say, and not just because he can have me executed at any moment!” Eddie seized Ethan’s hand and pumped it enthusiastically. “Ethan… Ethan what?”

Which, in Lower Murkford, was the equivalent to asking what line of business he was in. 

“Just Ethan,” Ethan said. If his handshake was uncomfortably crushing, Eddie showed no sign.

“Ah, and what did your father do?”

“My father was a king. And his father before him.”

Eddie took this on board as though Ethan was talking about ancestors in the milling business. “But you decided to strike out on your own. Lot of that going on around here these days. But that’s how the world moves forward, I guess.”

“Christopher said you’d been in Paris,” Lila said. She was studying Ethan with a good deal more focus than Eddie. “That you’d seen Alexandra and Chauncley.”

Ethan stiffened, his freed hand going to the hilt of his sword. “I’m sure you’re aware that is not how you refer to the king.”

Vexler pried his hand away. “This is a dinner party, beloved, not an insurrection.”

“And we know who you are, or were.” Lila smiled. “I do, at any rate. The menfolk find these concepts a little too complex.”

“I like your sword,” Mikey piped up. “Is it pointy? Most of them are pointy.”

They sat and ate some sort of lamb or chicken stew, Ethan’s sword across Mikey’s lap, Mikey’s thumb already bleeding from testing out the potential pointiness. Ethan told them about Paris in halting, stilted tones like a schoolboy trying to make it through a surprise Latin exam until Vexler reached up and began to rub slow circles at the base of his skull. 

“Please excuse him. He’s not used to talking to people who aren’t servants or enemies.”

“So Ethan, who are your people’s gods?” Lila had folded her hands under her chin, looking intently across the table.

Ethan paused, probably looking for potential traps. “My father’s people were Norsemen. My mother was a Celt.”

“That’s a lot of gods for one family.”

“I’ve never concerned much about spirits. They’ll come for me or they won’t. They can take the people I’ve killed as blood sacrifices or not. Who am I to understand the ways of gods and demons?”

Lila smiled. “And Chris? How about you?”

“My mother said our people were from out east. I don’t know… All the easterners I meet are pale and blond. I think she probably got her directions mixed up.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure,” Eddie said. “Al’s mother came from out east somewhere too. There’s probably a lot of east. Lots of kinds of people.”

Vexler shrugged, giving Ethan’s neck a squeeze before going back to his stew. “Anyway, wherever we’re from, our gods didn’t come with us. There might be one big god, or a thousand little fairy gods. Who the fuck knows.”

“Okay, I heard people talking about God, did you start without me?” The door swung open and Maggie strolled in, robes pristine, crucifix pendant possibly larger than ever. “Hi everyone.” She kissed Lila’s cheek, mussed Mikey’s hair, and pulled up a chair. “Hey there King Chris. Hi genocidal tyrant.”

Vexler counted the fact Ethan hadn’t grabbed his sword and cleaved her skull in two before she even sat down as a major victory. “Maggie, this is Ethan. Ethan, Maggie.”

“How are the colonialist land grabs going, Cragnoor?” she asked cheerfully, spooning herself out some stew.

“Maybe you can give me some advice,” Ethan said. “Your recent crusade went so well. Exactly how many children were sold into slavery? I’d love to see the Q4 projections.”

Maggie pointed the ladle at him. “Okay, it’s so transparent that those rumors are being spread by our competitors, trying to increase their market share. The truth is all in the PR, and our unaided awareness has skyrocketed. Also FYI it’s not my crusade. Jesus came to a boy in a vision. Everyone knows that.”

“So if Jesus told me to conquer the Leaf People, you’d be fine with it?”

“Absolutely. So long as he ran it past our marketing department first. But as it is you’re an unbaptized heathen.”

“I let you build how many churches?”

Maggie shrugged. “Jeez, it’s not like I’m saying ‘unbaptized heathen’ as an insult. You unbaptized heathens are so sensitive.”

Vexler had rarely seen Ethan grin so broadly without feeling like someone’s throat was about to be ripped out. “So Lila… You were saying…”

“Oh, yes. So I consulted our sacred manuscripts and wisest elders, and they pretty much said, sure, whatever.”

“Your religious doctrine is ‘sure, whatever’?” 

She waved her hand. “Look, lifeforce is lifeforce. I could probably marry an oak tree and a squirrel if they asked me. Marriage isn’t this big be-all and end-all. You just stick with the person you love, be happy, and hope no one burns you at the stake.”

“I might have to disagree on that,” Maggie said, her mouth full, “but this stew is just so good. What is that, rabbit? No, don’t tell me... Some kind of boar?”

Ethan turned to him. “Marriage?” he asked in a perfectly level tone.

Vexler cleared his throat. “Speaking of druids, I think they could be a potentially powerful ally in our Lower Murkford redevelopment project.”

“We don’t want powerful allies,” Ethan said. “Powerful allies attract powerful enemies.”

“I’m not talking about cavalries and catapults. How did we get rid of the Valdrogians? By making this seem like a very, very unattractive place to live. And who wants to live with druids? Everyone knows they’re sly, untrustworthy, keep sacrificing your adorable pets to their crazy gods…”

Lila moved closer. “You’d offer druids sanctuary?”

“And other nomads, travelers, undesirables… I think we might find they’re mostly not as undesirable as all that. Just different.”

Eddie poured out another round of beer, in convivial spirits. “Hey, everybody shits, right?”

“Chris, this isn’t how society works,” Ethan said, his voice low. “Differences… They lead to war and death.”

“And to a Catholic and a druid, a shitshoveler and a king all sitting at the same table, eating the same… Seriously, what is this?” The more he investigated the meat beneath the sauce, the more baffling it became. “The same… food. Anyway, only people who don’t mind differences would come to live in a place ruled by a king who’s married to another man.”

Ethan sighed, digging the knuckle of his thumb into his forehead. “Like Nero? Not a good precedent, Chris.”

“Not a precedent at all. I’m supposed to hide away because of a couple of mad emperors a thousand years ago? Fuck them. I love you.”

“Hear hear!” Maggie said, then hurriedly looked back down at her meal. “Hear-hears are not endorsements. My views are not the views of the Catholic Church.”

“Chauncley might not be the smartest, bravest man out there. But he did teach me that we have to try. Even if we end up in the trash heap because of it.”

Ethan was looking at him, really looking at him. “This is possible? We can do this?”

“Lila says we can. And I’m the king, so I can basically do anything I want.”

Maggie took a swig of beer. “Yeah, totally. Jonathan sure wanted that D and D isn’t just for David if you know what I’m saying.”

“And you would have me?” Ethan said. “After everything I’ve done?”

Vexler reached for his hand. “I broke _my_ oath, remember? I left you. I won’t ever do that again.”

Ethan nodded slowly. “I won’t ever give you cause to.”

There was a gasp and a sob. Mikey’s eyes were filled with tears. “Sorry, sorry. It’s just… this is so beautiful! And I think I cut off my thumb.”

They took their time walking back the long path up to the castle, pausing on the bridge over the Murk to look back at the village, where some lamps and torches were still lit into the night. Vexler rested his elbows on the stone wall at the side of the bridge and looked over.

“We used to throw pennies in here for wishes. Well, not pennies. Pebbles we wished were pennies.”

“I threw pennies.” Ethan leaned in next to him, a palpable warmth as the breeze picked up. 

“What could a prince possibly wish for?”

Ethan’s big hand covered his two, warming, squeezing. “You know what. Also a magic sword and a horse that could fly.”

“I think the pebbles worked better.”

“Mm.” Ethan looked back toward the village. “You might’ve been right about the people here,” he said after a long moment. “There’s more to them than I ever suspected.”

Vexler tugged affectionately on his finger. “You mean the diabolical tyrant who thinks skulls are an entire aesthetic isn’t the only one with hidden depths?”

“Their depths might be greater than mine.”

“I don’t know about that. You just called them people, not peasants or roaches or vermin, so that’s progress.”

Ethan nodded. “Progress indeed.”

They kissed on a bridge lit by starlight, like the boys they once were might have wished for and never dared to believe. A kiss that was long and tender, as though they could dissolve into each other and never be parted again. 

“This place,” Ethan said finally as they embraced, his mouth by Vexler’s ear. “Tell me why you love it so.”

There were so many answers, from its shit-streaked alleys being the only home he’d known for many years, to Lower Murkford being more of a people than a place, to a thousand cynical remarks and jokes and insincerities. 

“It’s the place I met my husband,” he said: words that just an hour ago would have sounded nonsensical, but now seemed as timeless as the river and trees and stars. 

Ethan grasped him by both shoulders, kissed him again, and stood back. “Let’s go home,” he said, and held out his hand.

Vexler took it.


End file.
